Lost Themes

Over the years, director John Carpenter has created classic film scores for films like Halloween and Assault on Precinct 13. Lost Themes is his first standalone album and his darkly atmospheric style is intact.

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Since his career began in the mid-1970s, John Carpenter has been responsible for an admirable run of well-loved science fiction and horror films. Many of his features had low budgets but a lot of style. They were dark, dystopian, and violent (though seldom gory), with plots that glued together genre conventions drawn from westerns, '50s monster flicks, and exploitation cinema. His best movies—Halloween, Escape From New York, and Assault on Precinct 13, to name a few—have transcended cult-classic status. For the type of people who read Fangoria magazine, these are all-time hall-of-famers and required midnight movie viewing for virtually anybody else.

In addition to writing and directing, Carpenter also composed the scores for a number of his films. Working primarily with synthesizers, he crafted minimalist music that perfectly matched the eerie vibe of his pictures. These scores have proven at least as influential as the films they accompanied. Over the years, they have been studied by countless electronic musicians, dance producers, and general weirdos, who continue to find inspiration in the director’s ability to marry mechanical orchestration and highly emotive melodies.

Released by Sacred Bones, Lost Themes is Carpenter’s first standalone record. It is not a collection of cues, but a set of independent compositions that echo the sinister tones of the director’s film work. Each track is a sort of mini-score unto itself, shuffling a theme through a variety of moods and variations. To call Lost Themes a John Carpenter solo album is a bit misleading, though. The record is a collaborative effort that was casually jammed into existence by the director, his son Cody (of the band Ludrium), and godson Daniel Davies. As a result, if you’re coming to Lost Themes looking for the vintage Carpenter sound, you will have to adjust your expectations a little.

Horror and sci-fi films are where the techniques and sounds of 20th century avant-garde music—electronic composition, tape music, atonal harmonies—found practical use in the mainstream world. Dissonant sounds slot well into these kinds of stories because they effectively convey shock and alienation. And it doesn't hurt that they're easy to generate with minimal resources. All you really needed to start with was one long, sustained, eerie and suspense-generating minor chord.

Carpenter's scores blended experimental ideas with simple but solid melodies. Having limited skills as a musician, the director made innovative use of technology—mainly synthesizers and drum machines—to generate epic sounds on a thin budget. Most importantly, he allowed synthesizers to sound like synthesizers, rather than trying to pass them off as a budget orchestra. These warbly alien squiggles and pulsing bass tones imbued his melodies with a distinctively robotic touch.

Because these machines were time consuming to set up and program, the director had to adopt a spare style, which he often put to brilliant use. Some scores, like Carpenter's collaboration with composer Alan Howarth onHalloween III, were composed on synthesizers as the film was being played back live, which gave them a drifty and improvisatory feel. These instruments played a large role in Carpenter's aesthetic, but he never seemed wedded to vintage gear. As the times changed, so did his instrumentation, and by the '90s, Carpenter's scores had lost a bit of their grit and otherworldliness.

Lost Themes was composed using the computer-based sequencing software Logic Pro, and it sounds quite different from his analog synth-driven works. The keyboards are brighter and more video-gamey. On some songs, this doesn’t matter so much. From its first piano tones, "Vortex" is immediately recognizable as Carpenter’s work. If the director has a defining go-to gesture, it’s the pulsing synthesized bass tone, the beating of a single repeating note that provides a foundation for plaintive chords and hazy keyboard leads. It provides the bedrock for the Assault on Precinct 13 theme and also the soundtrack to Escape From New York. Fittingly, it is the central ingredient on "Vortex", which opens Lost Themes.

Other times, though, the details seem more haphazard. In Lost Themes’ lesser moments—"Obsidian" and "Domain"—it sounds as if the pair are trying to evoke dread and awe using keyboard presets borrowed from Kraftwerk-goes-Christmas holiday electro ensemble, Mannheim Steamroller.

The main thing that’s missing, though, is a movie. Carpenter’s classic scores were filled with silence and space out of necessity. Film cues needed to stay simple and retain a consistent mood so as not to overpower the on-screen imagery, which relieved a lot of the director’s music from the need for formal structure. Unshackled from that restraint, Carpenter and his collaborators have created a set of recordings that are very ornate and dense. They shift moods frequently, segueing between eerie drones and heavy rock. At times, the album is a bit reminiscent of the Italian prog rock band, Goblin, who also composed horror film scores. This doesn’t make it bad, but it does make it a very different kind of listen. And ultimately, it's a less distinctive one. The eerie and empty vibe-outs that made up Carpenter scores like Halloween III and Prince of Darknessleft a lot of room for imagination. They imparted scant information—just heavy atmosphere and mood that oozed out of the speakers like, well, the fog from The Fog and ultimately seeded creativity and invention that had little to do with the films they were made to accompany. Lost Themes is plenty dark and heavy but shorter on inspiration.